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Second "Design Recharge" Interview: April 1, 2015In this second interview with Diane Gibbs at "Design Recharge" we focus on International Fake Journal Month. If you're wondering just what that is, I give a great description of it, and why you might want to participate. Also check out our earlier interview (below on this list) if you want more information about how I approach visual journaling.

First "Design Recharge" Interview: February 12, 2015Diane Gibbs of Design Recharge interviewed me for International Fake Journal Month (2015). We get a little side tracked and talk a lot about sketching, visual journaling, and my creative process. It's a great interview.

Where Is Roz Blogging?

Podcasts with Roz

Danny Gregory and I Discuss Visual JournalingSadly a two part podcast from May 2008 made with Danny Gregory, author of "An Illustrated Life," is not currently available. We talked about journaling, art media, and materials…If this becomes available again in the future I will let you know.

Finding Bits of TimeRicë Freeman-Zachery, author of "Creative Time and Space," talks to me about finding time to be creative. (Taped October 23, 2009.)

On both mornings at 9:30 a.m. There will be a meeting to give sketchers an opportunity to meet companions to share the Fair with. Coffee & mini donuts.

At 4:30 p.m. each Sketchout day there will be a wrap up meeting to share work.

We’ll meet in the same location for all meetings—between the Food Building and the Agriculture/Horticulture Building.

It’s a rain or shine event.(There are plenty of barns and buildings to go into and sketch if it rains!)

Just like past years all you have to do is pay your entry fee to the Fairgrounds—the sketchout is free and open to everyone who brings a sketchbook and wants to sketch. (You can work on loose sheets if you want.)

Who are you likely to see at this event? Anyone who sketches. In the past we've had people from Urban Sketchers Twin Cities, MetroSketchers, the MCBA Visual Journal Collective, and friends of friends and work colleagues and PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER SKETCHED IN PUBLIC BEFORE but want to, and so on.

In short you will see people of ALL skill levels working hard (but having FUN) capturing what they see at the Fair on paper with a variety of sketching tools.

I’ll keep you posted of any news that I hear as it comes up. I'll remind you closer to the date, but why don’t you go to the Facebook page and sign up right now, because you know you want to. And if you put it on your calendar now then you won’t double book yourself and miss out on all the fun.

Look, I don’t think it is ever too early to start planning for the Fair. If you’ve never sketched at the Fair before then you might want to read some of my past blog posts on the topic.

I explain what to wear, what to pack (for supplies and other gear), how to select a journal to take with you, how to make spin art (!), and most important—how to observe and approach sketching with animals and people who are too busy working (or having fun) to stay still for you.

Additional posts can be found on my blog if you go to the category list and click on “Minnesota State Fair.”

Now I’ve got to go—I need to go think about which type of paper and which medium I want to take this year!

May 05, 2014

Left: Brian, my new T-Rex from Schleich, came with his own buddy (Todd) for scale. Click on the image to view an enlargement—and yes, this is an Hiatus post so the image doesn't connect with the topic of Altered Books at all. Read below for that information. I just thought you'd be as thrilled to meet Brian and Todd as I am.

I get asked about altered books all the time. In the interest of keeping with the hiatus and keeping posts short, but answering questions about altered books I'd like to call your attention to a series of posts I wrote in the fall of 2008 about an Altered Book Round Robin that the MCBA Visual Journal Collective (which I founded and was coordinating at the time) under took.

Altered Book Round Robin Part III includes on strategies as well as gluing (glues), and other materials used in working to alter books. It also shows examples from one of my altered books "Mysteries" and provides a link to that gallery of pages on my website.

Note: On my website you'll find journal selections from 1998 through 2008. I posted 1998 to 2003 images when I actually put up the website. To go back further would have meant endless days of scanning and when I started that section on my website it was for helping my students; it seemed an appropriate cut off. After 2008, when I started the blog, there was no point in posting journal selections on my website because I post and write about my current journal work on my blog. If you aren't familiar with this catalog of visual journaling examples you might want to go through and check some of them out. I post images and write about what was going on in my life as well as include comments on materials and techniques. At some point I'm going to have to update my entire website, but I'd rather work, and blog for now.

You can always find this journal gallery link by going to the left column of this blog and finding the "selections from my visual journals" image that shows Gert, my rubber chicken puppet. In that column you'll also find a direct link to my Daily Dots journals: Selections from my daily life drawings of my Alaskan Malamute bitch Dottie.

For many of you the idea of altering a book may cause waves of nausea. It might just seem "so wrong." I have to admit that for years and years I felt the same way. Then things happened. I got older, my life changed, belongings meant less to me, and the joy I take from drawing on lined or graph paper exploaded to include book pages covered with text. I really don't believe that you should struggle too hard against joy.

If you are intrigued by this sort of project and live in the Twin Cities Area (or nearby—we have members coming in each month from different parts of Minnesota) you might want to check out the MCBA Visual Journal Collective. It's a great group of creative, adult visual journal artists. You can share your work, hear speakers, and participate in projects. We meet the third Monday of every month.

I don't really consider myself much of a doodler. I don't have anything against doodling, I just don't find making patterns and shapes in a random or meditative fashion very interesting to me.

I enjoy looking at the doodles of others, but I long ago accepted that my brain works in a different way.

This doesn't mean that I don't pick up a pen and fill edges of journal pages with pattern from time to time, or that I might take a scrap of paper and start growing a design on it while I'm on hold listening waiting for my call to be answered.

Let's say I'm ambivalent to doodling.

That doesn't mean, when I consider some of the drawings I make that I don't consider them doodling of a sort, like today's sketch. So I think some of this is a fluid definition, a semantics issue.

But I've been thinking about this issue enough lately, in odd moments now and then, that when I cast my eye down on the list of topics I had assigned to this week I saw it's basically a week about doodling, in a broad sense of the word.

And for me that means doodling includes fantasy sketches—sketches which just come out of your mind. For me these sketches come after a chain of related sketches (e.g., after a week of drawing faces I'll do faces from imagination, just start structuring a face and work out from there). They happen when I'm tired but still want to sketch. They happen when I haven't sketched all day and want to sketch something before I go to bed. They happen when I want to try out some new materials without setting up to do an involved painting or drawing. (Today's image falls in the last category.)

To my eye these are typically hideous, misshapen things. I really do like to sketch things from life, not from my imagination. But sometimes things are so hideously ugly they kind of appeal to me. This happens sometimes with my pre-painted backgrounds when they get involved, textured, and tortured. It also happens when I just start playing with materials.

If you've read any of my blog posts you'll already know that I'm a proponent of playing with materials. If you do this when you're doodling, or you do it when you are drawing from your imagination, or you call your results a mess and not doodles—whatever is going on linguistically if you were involved in using a tool or medium and just puttering around, with your internal critic turned off, just looking for what might happen without trying to drive the result, then I think that's doodling. (And by extension some of what passes for doodling is too controlled and thought out to really qualify.)

I think we all need some of this type of play from time to time.

I have been finding it particularly useful in the last half of 2013 while I've been working with an injured elbow and shoulder. Often times the types of sketching sessions I would typically do aren't possible for me because of lack of range of motion or pain. I've still got to sketch so I adapt what I can do and what I can use to that moment.

I'd like to encourage you all to think about what doodling means to you. (I try to set up the blog with series and themes and because of that I can say that this week's posts are really variations on this theme.)

I'd like you to think about how you define doodling and how you use it or don't use it in your drawing and painting practice. I'd like you to look at ways, if you don't currently use it, you might use it in the future. Think about how you might turn quick doodling exercises or brief doodling sessions into ways to generate collage material, thumbnails for paintings, to clear the gunk out of your brain, to turn off your internal critic (he can't criticize that which you already admit is going to go right into the bin, that which isn't of "permanence").

Look also at how your definition of doodling effects your productivity. If you lighten up on your definition of doodling, or any judgements you have about it perhaps there are moments in the day you'll be able to reclaim with sketching practice.

Also look at ways you let doodling (however you decide to define it) become a warm up that allows you to step into the next phase of your drawing practice on any given day.

Isn't it better to seamlessly move from one activity to another than to stop and analyze whether it's useful or not, or "valuable" or not?

It seems to me that drawings that lead you to the next thing are valuable for that alone, and it's fun to look at them as markers on your path.

You have the added benefit, when testing materials, to have no pressure to make a beautiful drawing. All you have to do is move the materials over the page and register what the experience is like. You can do that much when you have a cold, you're in pain, have vertigo, or simply feel out of sorts.

And the benefits are huge—you're warmed up, you have tested the materials and can mark something off on your to-do list if that matters to you, and you get to that next place where you stand and decide where you want to go next, and what you want to take with you.

Here are some past posts where I've mixed ideas and approaches to create "doodles" which are explorations of where I am thinking of going.

Thinking about doodling and practice can lead you to mix materials you might not normally use or bend lines in ways you might not normally bend them. See Playing with Paint.

November 06, 2013

Left: Dick found these cookies only moments after we entered Target. As of Oct. 29 they were still on sale for only $2.99. (Product image.)

We'd just stepped out of the car in the Target parking lot after an evening of other errands for Dick's folks. Without warning I picked up the pace and made a mad dash for the entrance.

R: I call "Date Night."

(I shouted over my shoulder toward Dick.)

D: I don't know that you can just do that, can you?

(He is frequently confused by the games I make up on the spur of the moment.)

He caught up with me and we got into an argument about some lame joke Andy Richter was assigned in a movie we'd both seen. (I love Andy, but his character misused a vocabulary word and Dick was making an allusion to that.) I lost patience with Dick and explained, "We'll run in, split up, reconnoiter, and see who comes up with the best stuff, all while getting everything on the folks' list."

Thing is we didn't split up, because Dick found this bag of Candy Corn Oreos immediately when I stopped for a cart and he passed a "check-out impulse buy station."

Demoralized momentarily, that Dick had found THE item of the evening (think about it, what could be more outrageous than Candy Corn Oreos?!), I pushed my cart listlessly down the aisles looking for the items on the folks' list.

It should be noted that Dick is always sportsmanlike in all things. He didn't lord his impressive opening volley over me at all. He actually seemed stunned that he had won, and won so handily. (Note: Don't play croquet with Dick. He's sportsmanlike in that endeavour as well, but, well, let's just say he's ruthless.)

But the clock was still running. In my defense I have to say I didn't give up. I kept my eyes open. I looked about. I found a couple items that on ANY OTHER DAY would have won, but just weren't up to snuff when compared with a find like Candy Corn Oreos.

First I found a little travel squeeze bottle that was really a tube, but it had a suction cup on it so you could stick it to the shower wall. That wasn't the great thing about it. It had a diaphragm type opening that expelled puffs of air when you squeezed it. (AKA, a fart-top.) I immediately announced that it would be great for splatter painting backgrounds. And I threw it in my cart, allowing that it didn't beat Candy Corn Oreos, but for 99 cents I had to have it for painting.

Once our necessary purchases were in the cart I started to linger in the boys apparel department. There are some nifty t-shirts available now. (If you're as fashion forward as I am.) Sadly the shirts were all 50/50 cotton/poly blend. I don't like polyester. Imagine my joy when I reached the section of clothing devoted to young boys.

For reasons I don't understand the young boys' clothing was 100 percent cotton! (Everyone past puberty should wear 100 percent cotton, but before, eh, not so critical.) Since I've never been well-endowed I was able to snap up several striped t-shirts in larger young boy sizes for $7 a piece—they will work up well as "Sheldon-wear."

We were off to electronics to finally look at a Roku (because I need to be streaming stuff, nuf said). While Dick read package information I found a lovely PINK USB-iPhone charger cord for the car. (In April while working on my 2013 Fake Journal I discovered that I actually am quite fond of pink.) When I returned from finding the charger cord, Dick was still deciding which way to go for streaming devices.

R: "I thought Bryan was just going to come over and take care of it? Why does one know young engineers if one doesn't make use of them in quasi-abusive ways?"

My tone held not a little disgruntlement that I wasn't already at home streaming stuff.

Dick explained that he had said he'd ask Bryan about how to best set things up.

But that meant I was still dependent on "Dick-Time," something universally recognized as outside the existing parameters of the space-time-continuum as we know it. In other words no amount of time or space, or the relationship between the two will impact a desired result such as a deadline or outcome, or fix an event anywhere in the space-time-continuum until Dick, who lives in the present moment, decides the moment has arrived. It's what I like to call the "Dick Factor." (This is what I get for falling in love with a classical mechanician.)

D: So Bryan told me the Roku was the way to go and how to set it up and I will.

R: No, no, no, [a beat] no, no, no. My understanding of our conversation was that you would ask Bryan how to connect to Netflix. Then we would purchase the necessary parts. Then Bryan would show up and install everything. And then we would take Bryan out to dinner. That's the universe in which I want to live.

We both laughed and Dick continued reading box tops while I went in search of…whatever would take my mind off not being able to go right home and start streaming. (Did I mention that I watch a lot of TV? I really like TV.)

And then I found IT.

Left: My find for the evening—that item which is quirky, probably shouldn't be purchased, unusual, perhaps nerdy, certainly tacky, and in the best of cases "OH SO ME." (The "ME" of course being whoever found it.) In other words the "Holy Grail" of "Date Night." (This image is from here.)

Which just goes to show you that you can, by feint, retreat, and diversion, lull your opponent into complacency (or bog him down with mundane tasks such as reading product labels) and emerge victorious. (All of which can of course be learned on Star Trek, the Original Series, if you bother to watch.)

Good sport that I am, I allowed Dick to call the result. He agreed that I had indeed won "Date Night," in the final minutes.

And we both agreed that had this case fit an iPhone 5 my OtterBox would be a thing of the past.

May you have equally eventful and entertaining "Date Nights."

Never give up!

Note: Because of my shoulder/arm injury I didn't bring my purse on this outing and so I didn't have my phone and its camera, or my stand alone camera. I did try to take photos with Dick's "not really very Smart-Smart phone" which he insists on using because after all it's all he needs and I can support that. But the photographic capabilities of that phone produced almost microscopic images, useless for this post. Hence the images contained here today. The first pulled from NABISCO, the second, from the link provided in its caption.

Update: We didn't buy a Roku that night, but on another evening we did…and that's a story for another post. Short version: Simple to install and I love it.

June 25, 2013

Above: Page spread in my Not-So-Blank-Page Journal showing how I treated edges on non-white pages, and the resultant scraps (dotted strip on the right edge) that were thus created and used elsewhere in the journal. (Usually I extended my collage items page edge to page edge, but on the left I wanted the head to fall in a certain place so the white paper it's on doesn't extend all the way into the gutter.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

But I then did something immediately to the rest of the book, something I had not anticipated—I colored all the page edges.

When Suzanne Hughes and I were working out the details for producing this project we knew at the start we would not be able to produce pages with the images bleeding off the edges. All copiers we were looking at would leave approximately 1/4 inch of white space on all the edges. I was so excited to get the project done that I kept telling myself that it didn't matter to me at all.

Then once I had pulled the book apart to bleed a sketch across the gutter I found there was no going back. I spent the next two days of free time taking each page in turn and coloring the edges of the page to match or coordinate with what was on the page.

In the left-hand page above I used a rubberstamp pad to smear a similar color out to the edge of the page. I did this on ALL edges as I didn't know what might be left uncovered when I got to that page to actually journal on it.

Whenever I was doing this I would place the page on a piece of clean newsprint and color away. This meant that I ended up with some interesting waste paper which I then cut up and used on other pages (see the right edge of the spread above where a pink color job waste sheet was used on that fore edge).

On one spread I actually drew a very stylized dog and then filled its body with collaged bits from one of the waste sheets. It was fun to have this extra decorative paper to play with.

When a page design had a mostly white background I left the white edges of the page, because there was no obvious border.

With the doctoring of the page edges accomplished I starting thinking about what to do on the pages…

We will be having a continuous, simultaneous showing of the finished journals (with a blank one for comparison with the "blank" pages) at the December 16, 2013 meeting. (You're invited even if you aren't working in one of the journals!)

I was late starting my journal. We got them on April 15 and it was May 21 before I started in. Then, I sprinted on and finished it on June 16. (I have been having a lot of family-related tasks and in my downtime I just couldn't stop myself from working in this journal.)

My response to the pages was different from what I originally intended when Suzanne Hughes and I planned the project. I'll have something more to say about that at a later date when I have a moment to compose coherent thoughts, but I thought I would start to show you a few spreads from the journal in the next few weeks.

This is a middle spread but one of the first I worked on (I didn't work chronologically on the pages in this journal). I had a huge Piecemeal sketch that I wanted to save, done on toned paper. I decided it would be fun to bleed the sketch across the page. That meant I had to take the book apart, so out came the coil.

It was totally liberating. I put this face sketch down and trimmed off the overhang and repunched the holes. But I didn't return to journal on the spread until much later in the process. I see it's one of the spreads that didn't get a date. I know I did it around June 10 or so. The caption is something I either heard on a TV show while I was decompressing or something that Dick said to me. (He often says such things to me. I do tend to act as if I were a secret agent.) Frankly I was running on heavy sleep deprivation at this point and I couldn't tell you.

One of the things that struck me about this journal is how much of the approach of my 2013 fake journal I carried forward—pages with no explanations.

I had a lot of fun.

Besides sharing more of my version of this project (and in particular what I did next before journaling on any of the pages) I will be documenting the project with a video made at the showing. The video will include the not-so-blank pages in their "raw" state, followed by the final versions created by the 28 participating artists. I'm very excited about that. So there is much more to come.

January 21, 2013

Above: My pocket made from map paper dontated by Thomas Winterstein, with my sketch cards, as well as photos of other people's work (top left) and extra pocket samples I made of different papers. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

In December twelve hardy sketching souls made it out in the cold to the MCBA Visual Journal Collective's Sketching Scavenging Hunt. We began the meeting by making a 6-pocket folder to hold our six sketch cards. Then we had about 50 minutes to spread out through the building and find items to sketch for each of the categories: people, landscape or scene; a holiday object; machinery; a found texture; interesting negative space.

We reconvened after the sketching to share our work and vote on winning packets (there was a bookbinding book and other small notebooks for prizes).

You can see the sets of sketches by the participants below. Click on each image to enlarge the view. The artist is listed in the image. I apologize for the poor lighting but we were shooting in a rather dim studio with metal tables which reflected the light (so I couldn't use flash). (I haven't worked out a way to get Typepad to do a good grid-type layout so these appear a little jumbled, but when you click on each you'll be able to see them.)

I'll add links to any of the artists' blogs as they provide them, so you can go and see some better scans.

The images I took were sized to fit onto 5 x 7 inch cards. The photos were posted to Drop Box in a shared file so that participants could download and print the images of the other participants to inclued in their packet as a remembrance of the day.

One thing I thought was really fun was seeing how so many of us selected the same objects or subjects, even though we were all spread out over the building and didn't sketch at the same object at the same time…

Don't forget that TONIGHT is our FIFTH ANNUAL PORTRAIT PARTY. It starts sharply at 7 p.m. and costs $5.00 (to offset copying and supply costs). Read about the details at the link in this paragraph. Come join us and have some fun!

January 11, 2013

Above: I've been practicing every chance I get, even quick sketches from the TV. (Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Calligraphy pen on Gutenberg paper in a 6 x 8 inch journal I made.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Don't forget that Monday, January 21, 2013 is the Fifth Annual Portrait Party of the MCBA Visual Journal Collective. We'll meet at MCBA from 7 to 9:30 p.m. We'll sketch a partner, and print an editioned photocopier book of all the portraits—and bind the books.

Yep, all in 2.5 hours. We've done it before, we'll do it again, January 21, 2013. It's great fun.

All adult sketchers of any skill level are welcome. Normally our meetings are free, but for this meeting we have a $5.00 fee (exact cash or check; we don't have a way to make change or run VISAs because the shop is closed during our meeting) to offset copying and supplies.

We need to start right on time at 7 p.m. so be sure to come early as parking can be a problem.

December 06, 2012

Join us to wrap up the year with a sketching scavenger hunt. Think of it as a sketch-in (since we'll be indoors.)

We'll begin the evening by making a small 6-pocket folder (out of maps donated by Thomas Winterstein).

Then each participant will be given 6 journal cards that will fit in the pockets (cardstock suitable for dry media donated by Roz). A list of topics will be handed out. Participants will then scatter to capture those subjects in sketch form on one of their 6 cards.

At the end of the evening we will display all the sketches (without names) and there will be blind voting for winners in a number of categories. (If you don't sketch fast don't worry, there is a category for favorite long sketch as well as other categories for people who "find" all the subjects.) There will be a book arts related prize awarded to each winner—prizes include small sketchbooks, book arts how-to books, and such.

It's a great way to practice your sketching and enjoy the work of other visual journal artists.

The meeting is free and open to all adult visual journal keepers who want to play along. All you have to bring is your favorite sketching pen or pencil.

ALL SKILL LEVELS are welcome—this is a time to PRACTICE in a great environment, while having fun.